Variation in the English definite article: Socio‐historical linguistics in t'speech community¹

Abstract

This paper provides a sociolinguistic analysis of variation in the English definite article, a.k.a. definite article reduction (DAR), in the city of York, northeast Yorkshire, England. Embedding the analysis in historical, dialectological and contemporary studies of this phenomenon, the findings uncover a rich system of variability between the standard forms as well as reduced and zero variants. These are involved in a system of multicausal constraints, phonological, grammatical, and discourse-pragmatic that are consistent across the speech community. However, the reduced variants are not derivative of each other, but reflect contrasting functions in the system. Interestingly, the reduced variants are accelerating in use among the young men, suggesting that DAR is being recycled as an identity marker of the local vernacular. This change is put in sociohistorical context by an appeal to the recently developing interest and evolving prestige of Northern Englishes more generally.

Operationalising salience: definite article reduction in the North of England

“…Tagliamonte & Roeder (2009) find 13.7 per cent in their analysis of the York Corpus, and I also found a ratio of 13.8 per cent in the Yorkshire part of the FRED corpus. On the one hand, it does not occur frequently in corpora.…”

“…Tagliamonte & Roeder (2009) find 13.7 per cent in their analysis of the York Corpus, and I also found a ratio of 13.8 per cent in the Yorkshire part of the FRED corpus. In the York study of Tagliamonte & Roeder (2009), young male 64 P É T E R R ÁC Z speakers use DAR to an unexpectedly large extent, which hints at its role as an identity marker. His observation is corroborated by Glauser's excellent description of the dialect of Grassington, North Yorkshire (Glauser 1984).…”

“…As Jones (1999) notes, it has long been a tool for illustrating typical northerner speech and, based on their data, Tagliamonte & Roeder (2009) reach the conclusion that it plays an important role in establishing identity in the city of York. As Jones (1999) notes, it has long been a tool for illustrating typical northerner speech and, based on their data, Tagliamonte & Roeder (2009) reach the conclusion that it plays an important role in establishing identity in the city of York.…”

Towards a Gradual Scale of Vowel Reduction: A Pilot Study

“…One of them is the fact that they are established on the basis of phonetic transcription which, in turn, are based on crude, auditory and subjective impressions (even more so if different people perform the transcription). Corbin (2003), Lavoie (2002) and Tagliamonte and Roeder (2009) are rare exceptions to the general trend: these scholars perform an acoustical analysis, securing a more objective measure of reduction. The need to seek a way to quantify reduction beyond simple phonetic transcription has also been implicitly recognized in Hollmann and Siewierska's study of reduction of possessive pronouns in Lancashire dialect:…”

“…These two measures, however, are used for different studies and different vowel database. Tagliamonte and Roeder (2009) claim to also consider intensity, but actually take this no further. The traditional narrow ways to measure reduction in vowels raise a number of issues.…”